Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, and Ambassador Ross Wilson, charge d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, were …
Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, and Ambassador Ross Wilson, charge d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, were the final Americans to step aboard the last U.S. military C-17 cargo jet shortly before it lifted off from the Afghan capital’s sole international airport Monday. All told about 6,000 U.S. citizens were evacuated from Afghanistan. They represent the “vast majority” of those who wanted to leave the war-torn country, Marine Corps Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, told reporters Monday. “There’s a lot of heartbreak associated with this departure. We did not get everybody out that we wanted to,” he said. “But if we had stayed another 10 days, we wouldn’t have gotten everybody out. It’s a tough situation.” It was both the end of a sometimes frantic U.S.-led evacuation from Afghanistan and the last action of a nearly 20-year mission in the war-torn country that began shortly after the Sept.11,2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. It was not a cheap undertaking. In addition to more than $2 trillion spent over the past two decades, America’s longest war cost the lives of more than 2,400 U.S. troops and more than 20,000 wounded in battle.
